|  |  |  | | | | | Maximum PC - All Articles | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  Last month, Taiwanese hardware vendor Gigabyte announced a wireless laser mouse capable of lasting up to an entire year on a single pair of AA batteries. Well, the latest on the ECO600 long-life wireless laser mouse is that it has made it past the FCC.
Expected to arrive soon, now that it has been cleared by the FCC, the ECO600 has a 1600 DPI laser sensor. The DPI settings can be adjusted using a couple of buttons on top, which are accompanied by a three-stage blue LED indicator - 800/1200/1600 DPI - to inform the users about the current settings. The mouse features five customizable buttons. We are still awaiting word from Gigabyte on the price and availability of the ECO600. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | 
Dell today announced the launch of its Sandy bridge-powered XPS 15z ultra-thin laptop. Touting the now defunct Adamo's spiritual successor as the thinnest 15-inch PC in the world, the company announced that the XPS 15z is the "first in a series of new thin, ultra-powerful laptops from Dell this year." Let's hope that the new series does not share the same fate as the Adamo. And on that optimistic note, let's just hit the jump and see what the specs say. Weighing in at 5.54 pounds and measuring 0.97 x 15.15 x 10.25 inches, the XPS 15z sports a 15.6" HD (720P/1080p) WLED display, and features the latest second-generation Core i5 and i7 processors with Turbo Boost 2.0, up to 8GB of 1333MHz DDR3 SDRAM, up to 750GB of hard drive (7200RPM) storage, and NVIDIA GeForce GT525M graphics with up to 2GB of dedicated video memory. The company is claiming a battery life of up to 8 hours with the ultrathin's non-removable 64 WHr 8-Cell Lithium Ion battery. "The XPS 15z delivers uncompromising performance in our most beautifully designed laptop yet," said Sam Burd, vice president of Dell's Consumer and Small/Medium Business product group. "It delivers all the must-have features -- from next-generation Intel Core i processors for incredible performance to optional full HD screens that are up to 50 percent brighter than standard displays – all in a stunning form factor that makes it the thinnest 15-inch PC on the planet." Talking of design, the XPS 15z bears more than a passing resemblance to Apple's MacBook Pro. However, it's considerably cheaper compared to the 15-inch MacBook Pro. Available today, Dell's latest ultrathin has a starting price of only $999. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  The recent rapture stir may have left its biggest advocate with a Rocky sized helping of egg on his face, but that's because he failed to take one thing into account: the world can't end until Duke Nukem Forever comes out. Now, though, it seems that Duke's finally ready to emerge from his dressing room and clear the way for zombies, robots, manticores, or whatever else is planning to swiftly and brutally remove us from this earth. That's right. No doubting it this time. Duke Nukem Forever is 100 percent complete. It's gone gold.
"Duke Nukem Forever is the game that was once thought to be unshippable, and yet here we are, on the precipice of history," said 2K president Christoph Hartmann in a press release. "Today marks an amazing day in the annals of gaming lore, the day where the legend of Duke Nukem Forever is finally complete and it takes that final step towards becoming a reality." Now all that's left is a short (nearly non-existent, in Duke Time) wait until June 10, and then you'll be able to kick ass and creatively allude to gum even though the world said you'd never be able to. It's quite inspirational, really. So then, final roll call: The King's returning. Will you be rolling out the dollar-shaped welcome mat? | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  There are two extremely satisfying features of Gotow.net's HexDefense game. The first is its simple tower defense game play. Setting up your defenses, upgrading your defenses and generally blasting the hell out of those sneaky enemy, umm, things will make your 15 minute wait in the DMV seem like three seconds.
You ain't crazy: HexDefense strongly resembles the GeoDefense series of iOS games
The second is the game's vector-like graphics. For any old time gamer, vector graphics will always be the glory days of the coin-op games. HexDefense keeps it fairly simple too. There aren't 45 different weapon systems you can deploy. There are only four types with each weapon platform: a laser, a missile launcher, a cannon and a force field device. Each weapon platform is more effective against certain types of enemies which vary from triangles to squares and other types of squiggly vector-based shapes. 
The key is to upgrade your towers and increase the exposure levels of the enemies to your weapon platforms.
The full version includes 15 levels and is intended to run on newer Android phones with 2.1 or up. Gotow.net says a Motorola Droid is the base level of hardware for the OpenGL game. The free version gives you two levels and is a good way to gauge if your Android handset is capable of running it. HexDefense, www.hexdefense.com, $1.49.  
HexDefense Free (left) and HexDefense (right) QR Market Links | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | This past weekend, the Maker Faire hit the Bay Area. In the name of all things tech, DIY and awesome, I grabbed a camera and headed down to the San Mateo County Event Center to check it out. The Maker Faire, in the slim chance you're not familiar, is where all things DIY, tech, electronic, crafty, engineered and genius come together for one glorious uber-geek festival. And oh, is it ever a sight to behold. Covering everything from bikes and solar power, to robots, LEDs, 3D, rockets, crafts, steam punk, DIY, health and more, it's easy to lose time wandering the Maker Faire-grounds. Despite my camera battery dying suddenly, I tried to capture as many photos as possible of the wide varitey of sculptures, activities, costumes, demonstrations, exhibits and offerings. Four hours was apparently not enough time since I sadly missed the Life-Sized Moustrap, MakerBot and Mondo Spider exhibits, but at least I managed to say hi to a group of R2D2s, discuss zombie domestication with the steam punks and watch a cupcake chase a muffin. (Yes. Really.) At Maker Faire, anything can cross your path. Click through to check out some photos! | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  No, this isn't a rehashing of news from last year. Voltage Pictures, the maker of the Oscar-winning Hurt Locker, has filed a new lawsuit targeting 20,000 more alleged BitTorrent users. The anonymous defendants are accused of pirating the film over the p2p protocol. This brings the total number of users sued by Voltage Pictures to 24,583.
The lawsuit seeks to force ISPs to reveal the personal details of the users behind those 20,000 IP addresses. It is a tactic several studios have used in the last year, and the whole thing was kicked off by Voltage Pictures' original suit. A judge must decide if the ISPs will be forced to hand over the information. Though, we should point out that the judge on the case, Beryl Howell, is a former RIAA lobbyist. If Voltage gets the details on a user, they will send out a settlement offer. The goal is not to go to court, but to intimidate users into paying up. Several ISPs have worked out deals wherein they will work through a certain number of the subpoenas each month. For some ISPs, that could take years. Comcast has the most horses in the race (over 10,000), but has not worked out an agreement. Verizon for instance has agreed to do 100 per month. It would take them more than five years to get through all 5,239 users. We also wonder how long the ISPs are supposed to be keeping our data anyway. How do you think this is going to pan out? | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  Petaflops. Something about the word brings a smile to our faces – maybe because it sounds like a vaguely dirty word? But the term refers to processing power rather than a part of the human anatomy. A petaflop computer performs 1,000 trillion operations per second, and the new XK6 supercomputer announced today by Cray promises to scale up to 50 petaflops. Now, math isn't one of our strong points, but we're pretty sure we'd be able to rock a pretty awesome game of Dwarf Fortress on one of those puppies.
According to Brier Dudley of the Seattle Times, Cray created the mind-blowingly fast GPU-equipped supercomputer by combining AMD x86 processors with Nvidia graphics processors. The Swiss National Supercomputing Center is set to snatch the first one off the assembly line, upgrading its existing XE6M system, which is also produced by Cray. Professor Thomas Schulthess, the director for the Center, said he couldn't wait to get his hands on the machine, calling it "the first general-purpose supercomputer based on GPU technology." The XK6 will cost between $500,000 and $1 million at launch, depending on the setup. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  Panda Security wants people to try out its new Panda Cloud Antivirus Beta (version 1.9), and to encourage users to give it a spin, the outfit plans to award ten $100 Amazon.com gift certificates to the most active beta beta testers, as well as free license for the Pro version. That means it's essentially a race to root out the most bugs and report them to Panda, which will presumably squash them before going live with the final version.
The 1.9 beta version includes all the features found in the Pro version, including behavior analysis, USB vaccination, and automatic, transparent upgrades to future releases. But what Panda's most interested in is how well its new interception of networking traffic works. Panda plans to use this to build cloud-based firewall functionality in future versions. Other new features include a processor monitor, ability to block a process by sending it to the Recycle Bin (these can be restored), ability to disable/enable BackgroundScan after signature cache synchronization, ability to exclude file extensions from the on-access scanner, exclusion of Potentially Unwanted Programs (PUPs) detections, a new graphical installer, and a new toolbar without ID Protect & Shopping and with Toolbar Cleaner. Panda Cloud Antivirus 1.9 Beta Download | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  After France turned its regulatory wrath on women in Islamic headgear, the country needed a new boogeyman to harass. For a while, we weren't sure who their over-zealous regulators were going to turn their nitpicky attention towards. The new nemesis was identified today after French President Nicolas Sarkozy spent the afternoon riling the digital elite at the e-G8 conference in Paris, saying that governments needed to take a stronger hand in directing the Internet.
"Nobody should forget that these governments are the only legitimate representatives of the will of the people in our democracies," Sarkozy said made his case for further government intervention on the Net. "To forget this is to risk democratic chaos and hence anarchy." Naturally, this didn't go over well with the assembled crowd of technological CEOs and industry thought leaders. FT.com reports that after Sarkozy's initial hostile volley, the panel speakers who defended the Net's openness and crucial role as a free-speech platform drew the most applause from the crowd. The heads of several major companies warned Sarkozy to cool his jets, and Vivendi's Jean-Bernard Levy went so far as to calling the European Union's "hyper regulation" a "major threat" to the Internet. Sarkozy even played the terrorist card after being challenged to "Do no harm" to the Internet. "Do you mean bringing up the matter of security from terrorism is harm, is that harmful?" Sarkozy fired back, hopefully to derisive sneers. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | In our last white paper roundup, we explained the technology behind three modern connectors. And while stuff like USB 3.0 and Light Peak is pretty exciting, we can't help but feel like technologies that speed up physical connections are a little behind the times. After all, isn't the future supposed to be wireless? In that spirit, our new batch of whitepapers explores the wild world of wireless technologies, including 4G, Near Field Communication, and 802.11ac Wi-Fi. So keep reading, and educate yourself about this generation's wireless tech. 4G Wireless How the next generation of mobile technology boosts performance The statement "4G mobile technology has evolved beyond 3G" might score high on the "Duh" meter; but when we asked how this evolution manifested itself, we got different answers from different folks. Mobile companies maintain that they're rolling out 4G networks and handsets today, but the ITU-R (International Telecommunications Union Radiocommunication Sector) disagrees. That standards body maintains that the gear currently being advertised as 4G falls well short of its ideal, and that true 4G networks and devices lie a few years into the future. We'll explain where 4G is today, how the networks have improved since 3G, and where the ITU-R wants the industry to go. 4G Today Devices and services being marketed as 4G today are actually 3GPP LTE (Third-Generation Partnership Project Long-Term Evolution) and Mobile WiMAX (IEEE 802.16e). Both technologies represent major overhauls to prior networks, so they're more advanced than 3G, but they're not quite 4G. Sprint has chosen WiMAX, and Verizon and AT&T are moving ahead with LTE. While each company evangelizes its own decision, the differences are nuanced. "In many ways, WiMAX and LTE are pretty comparable," says Verizon's Executive Director, Ecosystem Development Brian Higgins. "Both are OFDMA-based technologies, so they're quite similar." OFDMA (Orthogonal Frequency-Division Multiple Access) changes the way the wireless spectrum is divvied up. CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access), which Verizon uses today, assigns each transmitter a code in order to multiplex the signals from many users over the same physical channel. OFDMA uses two-dimensional resource scheduling (in time and frequency) to dedicate an overlapping but non-interfering frequency range to each user so that multiple users can be supported in the same time slot. Verizon's LTE service will divide the 700MHz frequency spectrum it purchased during the 2008 FCC auction into 10MHz channels. "Within milliseconds," says Higgins, "we're making decisions on what chunk of frequency and what chunk of time we are going to allocate, and how many of those chunks, down to each individual user." This allows the network to shift more bandwidth to more demanding requests in real time. 
Both next-gen mobile technologies—3GPP LTE and Mobile WiMAX—rely on Orthogonal Frequency-Division Multiple Access (OFDMA) to make the most efficient use of the available wireless spectrum. OFDMA allocates time and frequency range to each user on a schedule, so that multiple users can be supported in the same slice of time.
Verizon augments OFDMA with MIMO (Multiple-Input, Multiple-Output) antenna technology at the downlink end. MIMO takes wireless communications' greatest weakness—multipath signal propagation—and turns it into an advantage. Radio signals propagate as they bounce off buildings, mountains, and other physical obstacles. Instead of rejecting the multiple signals, MIMO antennas accept all of them and combine them into a single coherent data stream. Higgins uses sound waves to illustrate how MIMO works. Imagine listening to someone speak at the opposite end of a furnished room. That person represents a single radio transmitter. As the sound waves emanate from his mouth, some bounce off the walls, windows, and furniture, while upholstery, curtains, and other materials absorb others. Your ears represent a radio receiver. "If you are someone who has just one ear," says Higgins, "you're going to have an ability to hear a conversation to a certain level. But if you have two ears—which is what you're thinking about with MIMO—you have the ability to pick up different paths of sound coming across." Packet-switched networks mark another major improvement in LTE and WiMAX. In earlier networks, such as CDMA, the phone transmits to a base station, and that traffic is then sent through a T1 circuit to a mobile switching station. The data can then be converted to IP (Internet Protocol) packets, if needed. LTE and WiMAX networks can process all traffic using IPv6 and avoid the conversion step. Verizon, however, will continue using CDMA for voice traffic for now, reserving LTE for data traffic. All of these changes combine to reduce latency in LTE and WiMAX networks: OFDMA allocates bandwidth more efficiently, MIMO improves signal quality, and packet-switched networks reduce conversion overhead. Verizon claims its LTE latency is in the 30-50ms range, compared to nearly 500ms on some 3G networks. This should render Verizon's network sufficiently responsive for online gaming, VoIP, and other demanding applications. Will the Real 4G Please Stand Up? LTE can reach speeds of 100Mb/s downlink and 50Mb/s uplink, while WiMAX delivers up to 128Mb/s down and 56Mb/s up. These speeds hurtle past 3G standards, but they're still far off the 4G purists' target, which has led some to dub LTE and WiMAX "3.9G" technologies. The ITU-R guideline for true 4G is known as IMT (International Mobile Telecommunications) Advanced. According to that standards body, wireless technologies must run at 1Gb/s for stationary users and 100Mb/s for moving connections. The IMT Advanced guideline also calls for significantly reduced latency: 10ms. The ITU-R hasn't identified a specification that meets its goals for IMT Advanced; instead, the next generations of LTE and WiMAX—LTE Advanced and IEEE 802.16e—are being designed to achieve those speeds. While the ITU-R definition of 4G will push the industry toward even faster performance, carriers defend their "4G" designators. "We're talking about doing basically an order of magnitude change in the capabilities of our wireless technology," says Verizon's Higgins. "To us, that's a meaningful difference and is worthy of creating the right kind of brand around that, which is '4G.' "
Near Field Communication Spawned from RFID and embraced by smartphone makers, NFC uses electromagnetic induction for two-way data transfer. Here's how it works You're house-hunting and walk up to a home with a "For Sale" sign. You take out your NFC-enabled cell phone or tablet, point it at the sign, and without any further input quickly receive the property's lot size, square footage, layout, and asking price, as well as a deferred link to an online 3D showcase of the property and its salient features. Near Field Communication is a short-range, high-frequency wireless communication technology that is quickly working its way into mobile devices across the planet. Apple just announced that the iPhone 5 and iPad 2 will both support the emerging wireless protocol. Nokia, HTC, and LG have also announced plans to support NFC. We'll explore how NFC's underlying technology works, evaluate its prospects for future deployment, and assess the potential security risks involved. More Complex than RFID Radio-frequency identification (RFID) is the most frequent point of comparison for Near Field Communication. Both provide information from a tag to a reading device, but RFID is an identifier technology, while NFC is an instigator. RFID tags essentially say, "This is what I am," and present specific information. NFC says, "Here's some data, and here's where to go for more." Or, in the case of NFC payment transactions, "I have your data, now I'll go process the transaction for you." Both RFID and NFC operate in the unlicensed 13.56MHz frequency band. Both use electromagnetic field induction as a means of communication. Think about how electrical wires work. When you send a current through a wire, it generates a magnetic field around the wire. When you bring another wire into proximity of the first, that magnetic field acts on it and engenders the second wire with the same electrical characteristics as the first. 
If you use a loop of wire instead of a single strand, the increased surface area makes the magnetic field even stronger. Using an equal number of loops in the two adjacent wires preserves the transferred electrical characteristics, while using a different number of loops on each side causes a change in the transferred electrical characteristics roughly in ratio to the loop count between the transmitted side and the receiving side. This works well for digital data transmission because it is grouped as a series of 101010…~ data packets where, typically, a "1" is "on," or the presence of voltage, and a "0" is "off," or the lack of voltage (with "voltage" often called "signal" in terms of its use as a communications source). Current thinking is that the NFC "tag" should power the NFC "reader/writer"—typically, a cell phone or tablet, where the device's own power supply is necessary primarily for running the device. This is the reverse of RFID. Making the Connection In our example above, when your smartphone (the reader/writer) enters the
proximity of the "For Sale" sign (the tag), the NFC chip embedded in the sign enters active mode and immediately begins sharing power and data with your phone through its loop antenna. When the magnetic field created by this data transmission enters the near field—about one wavelength from the sign—it excites the loop antenna on your smartphone and induces the data onto it. In a simple transfer of data from the tag to the reader, this could be as simple as, "Are you a compatible device?" "Are you ready to receive information?" and, "Here it is." The incoming data could also include references to websites and other small data sets. If the connection is made to initiate a payment for goods or services, the tag can add a wait period for a response from the credit organization and then a confirmation that the payment was either accepted or declined, and a transaction number and date. The beauty of NFC is that there's no need for anyone to activate a pairing. It automatically happens whenever the appropriate devices are within proximity of each other. No activity can proceed, however, unless the reader confirms that the communication is wanted. The downside is that the data transfer rates are slow. Currently, the range of rates is limited to 106Kb/s, 212Kb/s, and 424Kb/s, which makes 802.11b's 10Mb/s feel blazingly fast. For now, this is more than adequate for the type and quantity of information that is typically passed between NFC devices. Security Concerns Because the distance required to connect two devices is so small and because NFC is still developing, security concerns are minimal—for now. Possible threat vectors include: faux tags that can snag data from your smartphone, or reader devices that can steal data from the tags on your credit cards or key ring. Device owners would have to approve a conversation between their reading device and the faux tag for the first breach to happen. The latter example is far more likely to occur—someone would have to breach your personal space while holding an NFC reader in hand to swipe your data. For public transit commuters in urban environments, this is an everyday experience.
Regardless, the possibilities and interest in NFC is great enough that we'll see widespread adoption within two years. And it has the very real potential to dent the revenue of commerce transaction companies like VISA and MasterCard. In a world where you pay for everything by smartphone, who needs Visa to handle the transactions? To defend its turf, Visa has been conducting an NFC trial program for the last six months in the Spanish resort town of Stiges to investigate the viability of making VISA payments using NFC-based smartphones. By all accounts, both the company and the 1,500 trial users liked the result. MasterCard has performed similar tests with similar results.
802.11ac With eight transmitting antennas and theoretical data transfer rates of 1Gb/s, Wi-Fi is about to become turbocharged Not much has happened to good old Wi-Fi since 802.11n arrived on the scene about six years ago, but a new protocol that the 802.11 WG (Working Group) is currently stirring up might turn out to be much bigger and way faster than 802.11n. It's called 802.11ac, and it promises a whopping 1Gb/s throughput by improving modulation and extending 802.11n's MIMO scheme to extreme levels. The only real bad news is that we may have to wait a while to experience it. We'll explore the specifications of this budding standard and its potential availability below. The Current State of AC Where 802.11n offered a dual-band solution (2.4GHz and 5GHz), 802.11ac operates solely in the 5GHz (VHT, or very high throughput) band. This is still considered a cleaner spectrum than 2.4GHz, despite its use in 802.11n, because few 802.11n access points actually use much of the higher band. The basic specifications for 802.11ac, as currently defined, are as follows: Wider channel bandwidths: 80MHz and 160MHz channel bandwidths (vs. 40MHz maximum in 802.11n). The 80MHz channel is mandatory for stations (STAs); 160MHz is optional. More MIMO spatial streams: Support for up to eight spatial streams (vs. four in 802.11n).
Multiuser MIMO: Multiple stations (STAs, typically handheld or mobile devices), each with one or more antennas, can transmit or receive independent data streams simultaneously. Downlink MU-MIMO (a single transmitting device with multiple receiving devices) is an optional mode within the specification. The upside of these multistation enhancements is that routers or host computers will be theoretically capable of streaming HD video to multiple clients throughout a networked environment. Space Division Multiple Access (SDMA): Streams of data are resolved spatially as opposed to by frequency. This is similar to 802.11n's MIMO approach and boosts throughput while also ensuring signal strength and fidelity. Modulation: 256-QAM (quadrature amplitude modulation), rate 3/4 and 5/6 is used to carry data, as opposed to 64-QAM, rate 5/6 in 802.11n. The result should be considerably improved throughput. (This is not the same as the digital television QAM standard.) 
The chart above describes a series of possible 802.11ac usage scenarios based on device and network configurations. Other features include improved beamforming, which will enable the multiple signal emissions to work together, and MAC modifications to support the multiclient changes noted above. The standard as currently specified is also backward compatible for 20/40/80/160MHz channels as well as 802.11a/b/n devices. It's worth noting that while 802.11ac's goal is to produce transfer rates as high as 1Gb/s, rates will vary depending on the exact scenario. We'll insert our usual caveat here: Real-life transfer rates are always lower than theoretical throughput rates—sometimes embarrassingly so. 802.11ac will be faster than 802.11n, but probably not as fast as the throughput rates claim. For example, 802.11ac will probably operate in the 350Mb/s range, not 1Gb/s—which is still a huge step up from 802.11n's 160Mb/s (or so). This said, given the use of multiple signals, it's theoretically possible that 802.11ac might even be able to exceed the maximum given exaggerated MU-MIMO conditions. At the very least, this architecture will permit much faster file synchronization and backup, and may even permit direct transmission of wireless video signals. Pretender to the Throne As if we haven't had enough of competing standards over the years, the 802.11 Working Group is also working on an 802.11ad specification that operates in the 60GHz bandwidth spectrum. Fortunately, it and 802.11ac are not competitive. They can, in fact, be used in complementary situations. For example, using both 5GHz and 60GHz interfaces, it's possible to carry typical network data on the 802.11ac portion throughout the house while using the 802.11ad specification for streaming media within rooms. Assumptions, at this point, indicate that 802.11ad and its potential 6Gb/s transfer rate should be able to handle as many as three HD videos simultaneously. The semi-bad news is that 802.11ad parallels WiGig's goals. And while 802.11ad is still to come, WiGig already enjoys support from Atheros, Broadcom, and Intel. Despite the considerable stature of these three companies, this is only semi-threatening to 802.11ad because support and alliances are routinely abandoned and/or assimilated with frightening regularity for a variety of reasons. As always, backward compatibility is a mixed bag. Its presence is understandable, but insisting on it often ensures that weaknesses built into prior technology limits performance. With 802.11n equipment already in use, it would be interesting to see the spec architects draw a line in the ether and offer a fresh starting point for a new class of WLAN. This is not likely. When Is It Coming? Assuming that the ISPs don't start throttling bandwidth—a valid concern given the recent data limit edicts by AT&T—the implications of real-world data transfer rates of 350Mb/s are potentially revolutionary, particularly when used in tandem with 802.11ad devices. Video transmission, networked virtualization, remote control, and basic large-file transfers all suddenly become much more practical. So when will we get our hands on 802.11ac tech? The sad answer is not anytime soon. The standard will likely be finalized in late 2012. Assuming this is the case, Working Group approval probably won't come until a year or so later in late 2013, which means we probably won't see the release of officially sanctioned 802.11ac consumer devices until then. But, just like with 802.11n devices, it is likely that we'll be faced with confusing standards before the final 802.11ac spec is approved. Remember "draft-n" and its variants? We'll probably face the same coin toss with the same probability of buying noncompatible gear. Our take is that it's a small price to pay for doubling our wireless transfer rates. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  Microsoft is kind of like a six-year old in a lot of ways. It likes videogames. It pretty much does what it wants to do. And it definitely doesn't like being punished. The European Commission spanked the software giant with an unprecedented $1.3 dollar antitrust fine in 2008 after Microsoft thumbed its nose at the commission and refused to comply with orders to provide information that would help make Windows more accessible to third-party developers.
Microsoft's response? They told Dad what Mom said – or in this case, they filed an appeal with the General Court, the second highest court in the European Union. Reuters reports that Jean Francois Bellis, Microsoft's lawyer, claimed that the issue would have escalated this far if the original European Commission directive in 2004 provided clearer direction. Nathan Khan, the Commission's attorney, portrayed Microsoft as a crappy poker player: "This is a case about a gambler who doubled up on a losing bet, lost again and now wants his money back." Other companies with outstanding fines are watching the case closely, hoping the General Court sets a precedent that would let them wiggle out of their own punishments. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Your Windows Phone 7 device is officially obsolete. At a press event in New York this morning and several media events around the world, Microsoft cut the ribbon on its next generation Windows Phone mobile platform codenamed "Mango," which introduces "more than 500 new features to push the boundaries of the smartphone experience." Before we jump into Mango and it's many new features, let's put some worries to rest. Yes, your Windows Phone 7 device is yesterday's news, but don't toss it in a river just yet. Not only would that be environmentally irresponsible, but Microsoft is making the Mango release available for free to Windows Phone 7 customers (and will come standard on new phones beginning this fall). "Seven months ago we started our mission to make smartphones smarter and easier for people to do more," said Andy Lees, president of the Mobile Communications Business at Microsoft. "With 'Mango,' Windows Phone takes a major step forward in redefining how people communicate and use apps and the Internet, giving you better results with less effort." One of the main things Microsoft set out to do with Mango is create a "people-centric approach to communications." "Of course, the phone was originally designed to do communications, it was all about making phone calls," Less said in Microsoft's webcast. "But today, people communicate in lots of rich ways: Text messaging, picture messaging, IM, chat, email, social networking, even checking in your location is communicating to others about where you are. Taking pictures is moved from being about capturing memories in order to able to share, tag, to be able to get comments and be the beginning of a laugh out loud. And people are communicating not just phone to phone, but phone to PC and even to TV. But the problem is that today smartphones only include the very basic communications. Everything else is an app, and you need different apps for different ways to communicate. This means that people need to be able to hunt and peck to be able to communicate and share, and they keep missing the moment." App Integration 
It all starts with improving the home screen experience with more information being brought into those now familiar Live Tiles. Mango introduces real-time information from apps without having to open them, making the Live Tiles more dynamic. There's also a new feature called App Connect designed to connect apps to search results and deepen their integration with Hubs, ultimately freeing users from having to "connect the dots between applications on their phones and any given scenario." Here's an example. Let's saying you're using Bing to look up a movie. You would expect to uncover information about show times and theater locations, but why stop there? App Connect takes it to another level by surmising you might want to buy a ticket, and so it brings forward the Fandango app. You'll also be able to swipe through to other compatible apps, like IMDB, where you could click through and view the trailer. "It's like having a great butler or a valet that you've known for 30 years who can anticipate your every need instead of you doing all the the work yourself," said Greg Sullivan, senior product manager of mobile communications at Microsoft. "Windows Phone stitches all of this together for you and connects the applications you have on your phone, or that we have in the marketplace, to the rest of what you're doing, in a way that's much, much deeper than any other platform. So you can go from Binging to buying in seconds." The predictive nature of Mango isn't limited to movies and Bing, but what developers ultimately end up doing with App Connect. Communication 
With the Mango update, Windows Phone users can group contacts into personalized Live Tiles to see the latest status updates from the home screen. You may, for example, setup a group for your co-workers and another for your family and/or friends, and then send texts or IMs to an entire group at once. It's not a revolutionary concept, or even a new one by any means, but like everything Microsoft is trying to accomplish with Mango, it's about putting that functionality within easy reach. Social networking runs a little deeper with Mango. Twitter and LinkedIn feeds have been integrated into contact cards, and conversation threads make it easy to weave between SMS text, Facebook chat, and Windows Live Messenger all within the same conversation. Other ways Mango tries to make it easier to connect and share is through the use of a linked inbox where you can view multiple email accounts at once, and hands-free messaging with built-in voice-to-text and text-to-voice support. Internet Explorer 9 and Beyond 
Microsoft ported a version of IE9 over to Mango with support for HTML5 and full hardware acceleration, and Microsoft says it's exactly the same as the desktop version. In addition, Mango proposes to "connect the power of the web to the unique capabilities of Windows Phones, such as location awareness, camera, and access to apps, to present a way of viewing the web that is more localized, actionable, and relevant." One way Mango does this is with a feature called "Local Scout." This provides hyperlocal search results and will recommend nearby eateries, shopping, and activities. You'll be able to see indoor maps of malls and other public locations, all of which is brought together on a "Quick Card," which gives users a quick summary of relevant information, including related apps. Of course, this is Microsoft we're talking about here, and so Bing is a big part of the ecosystem and deeply integrated into Mango. One of the cooler implementations is that of "Bing Vision," essentially an image scanner that uses your phone's camera and ties in with App Connect, giving users another way to search in addition to text and voice. During the webcast, Microsoft demonstrated Bing Vision by holding a Windows Phone 7.1 (pre-release version) in front of a book cover. The camera scanned the cover and (correctly) identified it as Miley Cyrus' latest autobiography. This brings up a Quick Card with a description of the book, lowest price, ratings/reviews, and different places to buy it. From there, Mango's App Connect feature kicks in, which identifies compatible apps, like Kindle. Tapping the Kindle app fires it right up and transfers the data over, whisking the user over to the book's entry in the Kindle Store. It's all very slick. MISC 
With over 500 new features, it would be a mammoth task trying to cover them all here, but we can point out some of the remaining highlights. These include: - Xbox Live: Your 3D avatar is integrated into the Games hub, eliminating the need to download a separate app. Gaming is a more social experience, as this is the only phone that connects to Xbox Live. Users can view friend requests, send/receive messages, view who's online and what they're playing, compare games with friends and colleagues, view achievements, and a whole lot more.
- Multitasking: Users are able to jump around from app to app by holding down the back button to bring up a screen of recent app tiles. Similar to iOS, apps are frozen in the background and will come to life when you swipe one to the forefront. The upshot to this approach is improved battery life versus that of true multitasking.
- Music Search: Think of Shazam. By holding the phone to a speaker, Mango's Music search lets users search Bing to get information about a song, such as the title, artist, and album title.
If you don't have an hour and a half to devote to watching Microsoft's webcast, you can get a glimpse of Mango in this two and a half minute YouTube demo. Maximum Tech's take: By all accounts, Mango is certainly an ambitious and feature-rich update to the Windows Phone platform. But will it be enough? According to market research firm Gartner, Microsoft only sold 1.6 million WP7 devices in the first quarter of 2011, far less than Android (36.3 million), iOS (16.9 million), and RIM (13 million). Heck, that's even less than the number of Windows Mobile devices -- Microsoft sold a total of 3.6 million Windows devices in Q1, which means that 2 million weren't running Redmond's latest and greatest mobile OS. Looking at the glass half full, the Windows Phone platform holds a lot of promise, and perhaps Mango will turn things around. It also doesn't hurt that Microsoft is bringing more hardware partners to the WP7 party, including Acer, Fujitsu, and ZTE Corp. Microsoft said new handsets shipping this fall will be powered by Qualcomm's second-generation Snapdragon processors. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Don't you hate it when leaked pictures of future products pop up on the web, but they turn out all blurry like a kid with a $10 Kodak snapped the photos? Yeah, we do too, but luckily that isn't what we have here. Mysteriously manifesting out of the deepest corners of cyberspace are several closeups of MSI's upcoming Bulldozer board, the 990FX-GD6A. None of the teaser shots show the whole board at once, though we suppose you could print them out, put them together like a jigsaw puzzle, and fill in the blanks. Or, hop over here for a quick video tour by our own Senior Editor, Gordon Mah Ung, who got his hands on one of the first AM3+ boards every made by, well, methods we're not at liberty to share ever since Gordon started complaining of being followed on his way to work. In any event, get your click finger ready and enjoy these non-blurry closeups (click for the full view) which, like the Ultimate Warrior, come from parts unknown! | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  Mac users like to flaunt their supposed security in the face of PC enthusiasts all the time. "Spyware? Viruses?" they ask, usually while gently sipping tea with one pinky raised. "Oh, no. Macs don't get those." Given the snootiness, we can help but smile when we imagine them sputtering and spitting out said tea in the wake of the Mac Defender malware that began making the rounds earlier this month. Today, ZDNet reported that Apple explicitly told its support techs not to help users remove the infection. Where's your Steve Jobs worship now?
Ed Bott cites multiple anonymous sources who work for AppleCare and third-party call centers. Apparently, somewhere between 25% and 50% of the all calls to Apple's support line the past few weeks have come from concerned Apple users whose Mac Defender-ridden Macs have been popping up adult websites. Bott estimates that between 60,000 and 125,000 Macs may have been infected. Apple's response? Nothing, officially. But the article's sources say that Apple has instructed its support staff to point callers towards a couple of antivirus programs "from anywhere" and avoid helping them in any other way. They can't even point callers to forums that discuss removing Mac Defender – even Apple's own forums. Sure, Apple's position is ridiculous, but so is the fact that Mac Defender's causing so much havoc in the first place. Users basically have to invite the low-risk application onto their system. Maybe some more time on a PC would get Mac users more familiar with the real Internet? | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Finally, the semiconductor industry is catching up with Intel. Now, any chip designer can use transistors with high-k metal gates, which enable higher clock speeds and lower power consumption. It's the biggest advance in transistor technology in 50 years. Intel announced high-k metal-gate (HKMG) transistors in 2003 and introduced them in 2007 with 45nm Penryn processors. AMD wanted 45nm HKMG, too, but couldn't pull it off. The first AMD chip with HKMG is the Llano Fusion processor, an integrated CPU/GPU. Llano is manufactured in a 32nm process and is finally hitting the market this year. 
Now the wait is over. Independent chip foundries like GlobalFoundries (the AMD spin-off) and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp. (TSMC) are rolling out their 28nm HKMG processes this year. Any chip designers willing to pay the price can use HKMG transistors in their new designs. Test chips and engineering samples are looking good, so volume production will ramp up next year. The improved transistors will appear in some consumer products you'll buy in 2012. Few of those products will advertise HKMG, but the benefits will be higher performance and greater power efficiency. It's coming in time for the next wave of smartphones, tablets, and other mobile electronics. The "k" in high-k is the dielectric constant, a measure of electrical capacitance. The "gate" determines if the transistor passes current or not. Since the 1960s, transistor gates have been made of silicon materials. As transistors keep shrinking with each generation of fabrication technology, the gates keep getting thinner. Now they're so thin (only four atoms, in some cases) that they're leaking too much current. 
Substituting exotic metallic materials for the silicon increases the gate's capacitance, so it's less leaky. Higher capacitance also permits higher drive currents, which allow higher clock frequencies. The entire semiconductor industry now turns on such microscopic differences.
Tom Halfhill was formerly a senior editor for Byte magazine and is now an analyst for Microprocessor Report. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  Boutique system builder Digital Storm is trying something new on for size. Rather than burden less savvy computer users with having to research parts and pick out what they hope is the ideal combination, Digital Storm's new ODE gaming PC line comes pre-configured and full optimized, leaving you with just one decision to make: how much money to spend. Digital Storm says don't worry about breaking the bank.
"If there ever was an indictment against PC gaming, it's that it can be an expensive passion, that's why most gamers build their own rigs. Digital Storm has never liked this status quo, so we set out to create a machine that would deliver the extreme performance PC gamers want without breaking the bank. That is how the ODE was born," said Rajeev Kuruppu, Digital Storm's Director of Product Development. Cost of entry starts at $1,500 and gets you the "Good" configuration. That includes an Intel Core i7 2600K processor clocked at 4.6GHz, 8GB of DDR3-1600, Nvidia GeForce GTX 570 560 videocard, Western Digital 1TB hard drive, Asus P8P67 Pro, Corsair H60 cooling, DVD writer, and Corsair 750W power supply housed in Corsair's 600T White Graphic case and powered by Windows 7 Home Premium. A "Better" configuration costs $2,000 and comes with the following changes/additions: - Intel Core i7 2600K processor clocked at 4.7Ghz
- Two GeForce GTX 560 cards in SLI
- Intel 320 Series SSD and WD 1TB
- Asus P8P67 Sabertooth
- Blu-ray/DVD writer combo
The "Best" configuration runs $2,300 and kicks the SSD up to 120GB, and swaps videocards for a pair of GTX 570 cards, while the "Ultimate" configuration runs $2,500. For that extra $200, Digital Storm will overclock the processor to 5GHz, trade the motherboard up to an Asus Maximums IV Extreme, and slap Corsair's H70 cooler into the rig. ODE Product Page Image Credit: Digital Storm | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  You could see this one coming a mile away, or weeks away if you follow our complex conversion algorithm for distance and length of Internet rumors and speculation. Twitter's impending takeover of TweetDeck has been rumored since the beginning of the month, and it's now semi-official. According to reports, Twitter spent more than $40 million acquiring TweetDeck, though the exact figure isn't yet known since Twitter is so far refusing to commit 140 (or less) characters confirming the buyout.
"For all those who might be curious, we continue to not comment on rumors," @twitterglobalpr tweeted. According to CNN Money, it's a done deal that includes more than $40 million in a mix of cash and stock. All the papers are finalized and all that's left is penning up the press release. Twitter nearly lost out on the sweepstakes for TweetDeck, an Adobe AIR app that works with Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace, and is one of the most popular clients for Twitter. Back in February, UberMedia almost acquired the service for between $25 and $30 million, prompting Twitter to jump in with a counteroffer, TechCrunch reports. What do you think about the acquisition? Are you happy Twitter won out, or are you worried the company will just screw things up? Image Credit: Mashable | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  We imagine it must be pretty lonely for Intel when the world's largest chip maker up and decides to go shopping. Not many companies have millions of dollars to spend on a whim like Intel does, who just went out and invested around $24.5 million in four companies. With the four new investments announced today, and with recently announced deals in China and India, Intel Capital surpasses $10 billion in total investments since its inception in 1991.
Intel's latest investments include CrowdStoar, a global developer of social games on Facebook and mobile platforms with a growing community of 31 million active monthly users; iStreamPlanet, a provider of live web broadcast management and automated video workflow; Music Mastermind, the developer of SoundBetter; and PerspecSys, a cloud data security provider. Intel Capital's portfolio now runs over 1,100 companies deep in 48 countries. In 2010, Intel Capital invested $327 million in 119 investments with about 44 percent of funds invested outside the United States and Canada. Strangely enough, it appears Intel Capital has yet to invest in a high definition camera. 360p only? That's just embarrassing. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  Yahoo introduced the latest version of its mail service late last year in beta form and has decided it's now ready for prime time. Over the coming weeks, all 284 million users worldwide will start seeing the upgraded platform, as will Yahoo's global partners, including Nokia. Key features of the revamped mail service include improved performance, enhanced spam protection, and a customizable inbox with an emphasis on social networking.
Yahoo Mail users can now instantly respond to Facebook messages from within Yahoo Mail rather than jetting over to the social networking playground. Users can also view and post updates to Facebook and Twitter, giving it a leg up on Gmail for people who live and breathe social networking. The redesigned layout looks a lot more modern and can be customized with over 50 themes and stationery options. It's also fast, though we did run into some quirkiness linking our social networks that required us to log out and back in again. Otherwise, the service works as advertised. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  Dragon Age II, we wanted to love you, but you made it so damn hard. Whether it was your three whole environments, your confusingly bloated navigation system, or your guards' inability to suspect that maybe – just maybe – the folks with robes, silly hats, and sparkly staves might be mages, your innumberable rough edges cut us deep. We're willing to give your franchise a second chance, definitely, but another sequel? So soon? Let's not rush into things.
"I'm looking for exceptional environment artists to join me at #BioWare Edmonton, Canada to work on #DragonAge3 #gamejobs #jobs #3D #artists," read a tweet from senior director of creative development Alistair McNally. On the upside, the Dragon Age team could definitely use a few more environment artists, since all they evidently had during DAII's development was an old, soggy sandwich once nibbled on by an environment artist. Sad to say, DAII made the leap onto shelves half-baked, and it left a lot of players cold. Fingers crossed that BioWare's not trying to turn this one around in record time again. We're all for emotional rollercoasters, BioWare, but let's keep them in your games. We're not sure we can take any more heartbreak. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | After weathering a leak that would have bled most publishers dry, Activision's officially released the first Modern Warfare 3 gameplay trailer into the wild. Put simply, it's explosion porn – so obviously, if you're an explosion, this is not safe for work. Also, if you thought F3AR made it impossible to look at the number three without weeping bitterly for the English language, wait until you encounter wonderful hits like Threengland, Amthreerica, and Gthreemany. Check out the full thing after the break. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Last weeks Old School Monday featured a 1997 white paper explaining RAM - and since it was so popular, we thought we'd give you another one. Up this week, Knowing Your BIOS--courtesy of the June 1997 issue of Boot. It's actually hard to believe that an aspect of computing could have changed so little in 14 years, but the ancient BIOS is finally on the way out. So, read on for a historical perspective on the ins and outs of BIOS and PC performance and stay tuned, next week we'll cover magnets. (How do they work?)
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  According to Business Insider, Windows chief Steven Sinofsky will be at next week's All Things D conference. All Things D is a huge platform for any technology exec, and all thoughts have immediately turned to Windows 8. Could we see the first official unveiling of Microsoft's next operating system so soon?
The software giant is reportedly working to improve Windows 8 in a number of ways. One of the most often cited examples is the introduction of ARM CPU support. These are the chips that are found in most mobile devices. As part of this, Microsoft would also need to design a touch-based interface if they want to be on tablets. We're also hearing about various UI tweaks that closely resemble Windows Phone 7. The timing of this announcement would be about right. We've heard that Windows 8 will ship in 2012, and a June announcement could easily lead to a fall beta. That would give Redmond a solid window to test the product much as they did with Windows 7. Do you think we're going to see Windows 8 next week? | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Whadaya want for less than a Benjamin? Corsair blew our minds with its first speaker-building effort: The 2.1-channel SP2500 rocked hard. Now the company is back with a scaled-down system, the SP2200. This 2.1-channel set offers smaller and fewer drivers driven by a less-powerful amp. It also lacks the fancy tethered control module, but it's $150 cheaper than its sibling. Can Corsair wow us again? Yes and no. This is one helluva speaker system for the money, but Corsair can't defy the laws of physics—or economics. The SP2200 uses a pair of bridged Class D amps to deliver 30 watts to the 6-inch paper driver in the ported subwoofer, while two independent Class D amps drive the 2-inch full-range paper drivers in the satellites with a modest eight watts each (46 watts in total). The satellites in the pricier SP2500 system are bi-amplified two-way speakers, with separate amps driving each tweeter and midrange (232 watts in total). The satellites in the SP2200 consist of full-range speakers, meaning a single driver in each cabinet is tasked with delivering the entire sonic spectrum (or at least all the frequencies above those assigned to the subwoofer). 
Despite its ultra-low price tag, the SP2200 features four Class D amplifiers, two auxiliary inputs, and a headphone output. The satellites even have removable grills! That's a difficult task, and the SP2200's satellites tend to over-emphasize the mids and flatten the highs. Listening to Steely Dan's "What a Shame About Me," from the Two Against Nature CD, the hi-hat strike that starts this track lacked the bacon-grease sizzle that we hear from higher-end speakers. And when we played Peter Gabriel's cover of Paul Simon's "Boy in the Bubble," from his Scratch My Back release (sampled at 48kHz and encoded in 24-bit FLAC by B&W's Society of Sound music service), the speakers did a wonderful job producing the piano's lower register, but Gabriel's voice sounded as though he was singing from the bottom of a bucket. While grooving to Tower of Power's "Squib Cakes" (from Back to Oakland), however, we had to keep reminding ourselves that we were listening to sub-$100 speakers. The SP2200 did an excellent job of distinctly rendering each individual instrument in the band's horn section, and preserving the tiny silences in between the attack of each note that reveal just how tight these musicians can play. But while the sub delivered deliciously taut bass response, the music still sounded constrained to the middle of the harmonic range. We really missed some of the nuances—the crack of a tightly wound snare drum, for instance—that high-end sound systems are capable of reproducing. That level of fidelity isn't quite as important when you're playing games, because your attention isn't exclusively focused on sound when you're dodging enemy fire or crushing a zombie's skull. And the SP2200 delivered a great experience with Call of Duty 4 and Left4Dead 2, with thundering explosions, pounding gunshots, and bone-chilling screams from the horde without a hint of distortion—even with the volume dial turned hard right. The SP2200 boasts an off-the-chart price/performance ratio, but we'd happily pay more to get more. $90 (street price), www.corsair.com | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  Elitegroup Computer Systems (ECS) is doing its best to shed its old reputation as strictly a budget board maker by focusing on higher end chipsets. That includes AMD's upcoming 990FX chipset, the one built for Bulldozer sporting a new AM3+ socket. This is the chipset enthusiasts will reach for when popping in new four-, six-, and even eight-core processors.
The fellas over at Turkish website Donanimhaber.com managed to unearth a picture of ECS' soon-to-be flagship AMD motherboard, the A990FXM-A. It looks like most of the other 990FX boards we've seen and features four DDR3 DIMM slots (supports dual-channel DDR3-1866), three PCi-Express 2.0 x16 slots (x16/x16 or x16/x8/x8), six SATA 6Gbps ports, IDE port, and two eSATA ports. Also included are a handful of USB 2.0 ports and four USB 3.0 ports, plus a bunch of other goodies. On a related note, Nvidia and AMD recently were able to put aside their differences long enough to hammer out a license agreement that allows AMD chipsets to use Nvidia's SLI technology. The first chipsets to make good on this new license will be AMD's 970, 990X, and 990FX. Image Credit: ECS via donanimhaber.com | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Email. We all have it. We all hate it. From Outlook to Gmail to the Great Email Beyond, here's how to make the most of it. They say that the kids don't use email that much these days. Doesn't that sound dreamy? We adults, unfortunately, have no such luxury. For better or for worse, email is a major part of our personal and work lives. We're tempted to just leave it at that. But there's no need to feel hopeless. We took a good, long look at the center of our communication universe with an eye toward improving, upgrading, and (hopefully) dominating it. The fruits of our labor are in the following pages. Enjoy! (Or maybe we should say, suffer less?) Getting Intimate with Outlook The road to email mastery begins with Microsoft's ubiquitous email application Using Outlook is one thing. Exploiting it to its fullest potential is another. Over the next two pages, we'll give you a few ways you can do just that, and then show you five other ways you can exist without Microsoft's seemingly ubiquitous personal information manager. Photo ID 
Photo ID: Microsoft now has its own built-in social connections. The Microsoft Outlook Social Connector Provider for Facebook, new on the scene but compatible with Outlook 2010, 2007, and 2003, links your Facebook or LinkedIn account to Outlook and helps you keep on top of information you can use to blackmail… er, get familiar with your contacts. Plus, having pics of your peeps helps safeguard against wrongly addressed emails. Fast-Action Screenshots In Outlook 2010, you can insert a screenshot in the body of your email message. Click the Insert tab of the message you've created and select Screenshot. A drop-down menu appears, from which you can instantly select the current image in any nonminimized window. Even cooler, if you scroll down to the bottom of that menu and click Screen Clipping, you get a chance to crop and select just a portion of that image. Get Your Xobni On 
Xobni offers faster Outlook searches and connects to social media. Xobni ("inbox" spelled backward) is an Outlook add-on that appears within the program as a separate pane and does a bunch of cool stuff that Outlook junkies will eat up. Xobni searches your emails faster than Outlook itself, extracts oodles of information, and features a deep connection with social networking sites. Outlook 2010 now handles the social networking angle itself, yet Xobni continues to maintain its rabid fan base. Check out www.xobni.com for more info. Take Command of Replies It sucks when you want each of your recipients to Reply to All, and one of them neglects to do so. But now you can ensure that the offending party gets with the program. In the message composition screen, click Options/More Options and look for Delivery Options in the drop-down list. Click Select Names and enter those you want to receive all future replies. Harness Quick Steps New to Outlook, Quick Steps are a series of macros that conveniently merge several separate actions—as many as 10, actually—into a single button click. And while Outlook's predefined Quick Steps are just peachy, customizing the macros is peachier still. To set up your own Quick Step, click Create New in the Quick Steps group (found within the Home tab), and fill in the blanks. Seek and You Shall Find Outlook 2010 offers more search parameters than a Dalmatian has spots. But it also allows you to save your results in fully customizable Search Folders. In the future, you merely access that folder when you need quick access to the results of those keywords and/or criteria. To create a Search Folder, click New Search Folder in the New group of the Folders tab and select from the available options. Or create your own parameters. Message Recall Isn't All It's Cracked Up to Be You know that intimate message you sent to your ex-girlfriend but tragically misaddressed to your new girlfriend? Well… Outlook now has a Recall feature (accessed via Move/Message/Actions) that should, one would think, save your sorry backside. Except it probably won't. You see, Recall will work its magic only if both email accounts are configured using Microsoft's Exchange and only if the message shows as unread and unforwarded. Moral: Do not misaddress. Sync Your Team Avail yourself simultaneously of the calendars of all your team members by creating a Calendar Group. Start by clicking Calendar just like you've always done, then look for the Manage Calendars group. Then click Calendar Groups and New Calendar Group. Choose a name for your group, then add your contacts. Clean Up Your Act 
Clean up your act by using Outlook's Conversation view. Ever notice that 'round about the third or fourth message in a thread (aka "Conversation"), each succeeding message just gets longer and more cumbersome? Now you can do something about it. First, switch to Conversation view by clicking the View tab and checkmarking Show As Conversations. To clean up a conversation, go to the Delete group in the Home tab, click Clean Up and then Clean Up Conversation. Voilà, Outlook will take care of the redundancy. Get out of the Import/Export Business It is not unusual to successfully import and/or export PST files (the critical Outlook file that contains all your irreplaceable personal data) to and from Outlook. Unfortunately, doing so will not only eradicate certain custom elements, but may also set you up for a file
corruption or a ghost PST that won't close. We know, it's happened to us. Our advice? Forget about importing and exporting altogether. Instead, close Outlook, find your PST file, and simply copy it to your backup device. To restore your PST file—say, after you've accidentally beaten your PC with a baseball bat—merely find that copied PST, recopy it where it won't cause a conflict, then open Outlook and instruct it to access that file (File/Open/Open Outlook Data File).
Our Top Five Outlook Alternatives In the corporate world—and especially in those environments built on Windows—Microsoft's Outlook email client reigns supreme. But once you start poking around, you'll find that Outlook is far from the only game in town. Here, we present five of the most interesting alternatives for home and small business users. Zimbra Desktop Zimbra Desktop is open-source software and thus free. That it allows you to access email even when you're disconnected from the Internet and handles calendars, contact lists, and documents in a single application is even more reason to consider it. www.zimbra.com Gmail Is Outlook's entrenchment the primary reason it still dominates market share? Would web-based Gmail otherwise lead the pack? Truth is that the two offer very different approaches. In an environment where offline Inbox access and Microsoft Office merging capabilities are mandatory, Outlook is king. But Gmail delivers far more mobility, costs nothing, and is seemingly becoming the future right before our eyes. mail.google.com Thunderbird Fast, very fast, and in a strictly email sense, the equal of Outlook (and perhaps more intuitive to use with its tab-browsing style), Mozilla's long-established Thunderbird runs in any operating system and, like Zimbra, is free. It's also incredibly simple to set up, although add-ons are required to match Outlook's scope. www.mozillamessaging.com Windows Live Mail Effectively the successor to Outlook Express and Windows Mail—and better than both—Microsoft's Windows Live Mail is a good option for those who run in a Windows environment and don't need the added business-oriented features (and complexity) of Outlook. explore.live.com eM Client 3 Purported to be the fastest email client for Windows, eM Client 3 boasts customers such as Toyota and Oracle. Available in either a no-charge Home or $50 Pro version (which includes backup and syncing to any mobile device). www.emclient.com 10 Ways to Fix Microsoft Outlook The Maximum PC offices have been an Outlook shop for a long, long time. We started applying our brains to the matter of improving Outlook before realizing that your ideas are just as good as ours. We asked you to let the ideas (and gripes) fly, and these are the results. If you want to join the daily conversation about tech, point your browser to www.facebook.com/maximumpc. Christopher Alden: I'd love to have a Gmail-style conversation view. Robert J. Armitage: Better support for showing "new mail" in subscribed folders and sub-folders. For me only the inbox updates properly; I have to manually click others for the new message count to pop up. Mike Tjepkema: Integration of "signature grabbing," where you can double-click someone's signature and dump it into your contacts. It's available in third-party software, but I want seamless integration. Jp Allen: Fix Outlook Web Access for non-IE browsers. Better shared calendar/contacts. Threaded conversation view that doesn't suck so bad it gets turned off. Search that isn't beaten by third parties like the Globetrotters do to the Generals. More granular junk/spam filtering options. A far less bloated archiving option/format. James Burt: The ribbon interface, may it go back to the hell-spawned pit from whence it came. Its inconsistent layout, big buttons, small buttons, icons with no name, etc., are frustrating. Add in the fact that I find myself clicking more to perform tasks that were one or two clicks in the past is irritating. Cory Notrica: Add something like the Lotus Notes Swiftfile. It would be so much easier than building rules and clicking twice to file to recently used folders. Ryan Case: My #1 most desired feature in Outlook 2003 and Outlook 2007 is smooth scrolling. Suffer Spam No More Use these antispam tips for junk mail protection worthy of a… Nigerian prince Dear friend! I am the son of the late Nigeria's former minister of mines and power in the regime of the late former Nigeria's military Head of State. I have discussed with my family attorney how best to provide for you the information on blocking email spam. To unlock these mysteries, you need only supply $2,500 of your United States dollars. To show you my sincere interest in giving you these antispam treasures, I give you immediately a sampling of suggestions for reducing the amount of spam your inbox suffers. 
Use a Complex Email Address While using yourname@yahoo.com might make it easy for your friends and loved ones to find you online, it also makes it easy for spambots to track you down and pummel you with junk mail. To throw them off your email trail, consider using an address that includes punctuation or numerical values as well. Check Those Checkboxes When signing up for a new service, often times, you'll be given the option of opting in or out of mailing lists and additional services. Before finishing your registration, be sure that you're not accidentally signing up for something you're not interested in by leaving checkboxes in their native state. Take the time to do it right. Use Disposable Email Addresses If you need to register for something online, consider doing it with a disposable email address, like those available from services like Ten Minute Email (10minutemail.com) or GuerillaMail (www.guerillamail.com). Doing so will guarantee that your inbox stays spam-free. Maintain Two Email Accounts If you prefer to keep a record of what you've signed up for and when, a disposable email address just isn't going to cut it. Instead, consider using a secondary email address solely for the purpose of signing up for online services, such as web communities, Internet shopping sites, and newsletters. The bulk of the spam your online activity generates will be sent to the secondary email address, leaving your primary account relatively spam-free. Choose ISPs According to Their Spam Policy Your Internet service provider should be at the heart of your antispam solution, not at the heart of the problem. When selecting an ISP, research its antispam policy: Does it penalize customers who engage in spamming? Does it host spamvertisment sites? How closely does it guard customer information? These are all questions that your ISP's customer service representatives should be able to answer. If you don't like what you hear, take your business elsewhere. Unsubscribe Is Not Your Friend Taking the time to unsubscribe from a service you never signed up for in the first place is a sure-fire way of letting spammers know that their aggravating messages are indeed being read by someone. Don't encourage them. Instead, delete the email or… Use Antispam Software There are a lot of excellent antispam software packages, extensions, and services out there. Choose one and run with it. Installing antispam software like SpamFighter (free, www.spamfighter.com) can dramatically cut down the amount of spam your inbox sees on a daily basis. For the holy grail of Internet privacy, you may also want to consider investing in a computer security suite, such as our favorite, Bit Defender Internet Security 2011 ($50, www.bitdefender.com). Along with antispam protection, you'll also get antivirus and antimalware protection, plus a large number of other perks.
Gmail, Pro Style Trick out your Gmail experience with these 10 pro-level hacks Whether you're new to using Gmail or a seasoned veteran, we're positive that you'll find at least one of our awesome Gmail tips to be, well, awesome. Create Custom Labels 
Creating custom labels to organize your Gmail inbox is easy. From the mail menu on the left side of your browser window, click the More link, and then Create New Label. Enter a name for your new label in the field provided. You can repeat this process to create as many labels as you need. Use Filters to Organize Your Inbox OK, it's time to put those labels to use. Click any message in your inbox. Locate and click the More Actions button at the top of the message window. Now pick Filter Messages Like These. You can now create a filter that will automatically sort and label your incoming email. Bookmark Messages for Quick Reference Find yourself referring to the same email message time and time again? Instead of hunting it down every time you need to take a peek, consider bookmarking the message instead. This trick works in any browser and can significantly increase your productivity if having frequent access to a particular email is mission critical. Become a Gmail Search Ninja Gmail's advanced search functionality is a finding-stuff juggernaut. To enable these features, look next to Gmail's search bar and click Show Search Options. You now have access to a number of search parameters that'll make finding a message feel less like rooting through a haystack for a needle. Locating the message you're looking for becomes even easier using this method if you've taken the time to create customized categories, filters, and aliases for your account. If this turns out to be more search functionality than you can handle, click Hide Search Options to revert to Gmail's vanilla search bar. One Address, Many Faces You can use multiple Gmail address aliases to handle incoming mail. Just add a plus sign and a word to your Gmail address—yourname+news@gmail.com, for example—when subscribing to new services. All email sent to the alias will be sent to your inbox where it can be filtered. Use Gmail Offline Using online webmail while off-line? Insanity! True, but it can be done. Just install Google Gears and restart your browser. Open Gmail, and select Settings, then choose Offline. From here, you can enable offline Gmail access for use on your computer. Now that's sweet. Enable Free and Easy Gmail Backups Gmail's great—until it isn't. When the service crashes, it crashes hard. To avoid losing any valuable messages, consider forwarding a copy of every message you send or receive to a secondary email account. To set this up, click Settings and then choose Forwarding and POP/IMAP. Boom! Instant backups. Watch for Stalkers 
To access a list of recent activity in Gmail, select Details in Last Account Activity. To keep tabs on when and from where your account has recently been accessed, scroll to the bottom of any Gmail screen and from the "Last account activity" line, select Details. Doing so will grant you access to a list of locations, login times, and IP addresses that coincide with your Gmail account's most recent activity. See Who's Sending What Unsure about the origins of a message sent to you? Click the arrow next to that message's Reply button and select Show Original. Doing this forces Gmail to show you the message's pathing information. Copy the information to your clipboard and then enter the information in a service like MX Tool Box, which will look up the origin of the message. Send Executable Files as an Attachment For security reasons, Gmail won't let you send an executable file as an attachment. You can get around this by manually changing the file's extension before attaching it to your email. Provide the message's recipient with instructions for changing the file extension back to its original .exe and Bob's your uncle.
Set Up a Hosted Email Domain with Google Apps A personal hosted email domain for the low, low cost of free? Yes, Please Do you have your own domain and/or website? Thinking about setting up personalized email addresses to go along with them? Well, you can pay your ISP for the privilege, or you can quickly set up a free Google Apps account that'll provide you with a Gmail account branded with your website's domain, as well as a number of other Google goodies. Here's How It Works To set up your account, navigate to the service's home page at bit.ly/cEETyJ. Enter your site's domain name. You'll be asked to submit some personal information. You'll also have to choose a user name for your administrator account (yourname@yourdomain.com, for example) and a password. Now, scroll to the bottom of the screen and accept the service's Terms of Agreement. Before Google will allow you to marry your domain name to your Google Apps account, you'll have to verify that you actually own the target domain. If you agreed to the Terms of Agreement, there'll be a confirmation email waiting in your inbox. The email contains a link that will allow you to continue the setup process. Find it and click it. Doing so will open your default web browser, where you'll be asked to enter the user name and password you selected earlier in the setup process. Once Google accepts your credentials, a Google Apps welcome page will open. Click the Activate Google Apps button. This opens a new page with two tabs: Recommended Method and Alternate Method. We advise using the recommended verification method: adding a DNS record to your domain's configuration. 
Adding a DNS record to your domain is an easy way to verify your site with Google Apps. You'll note a drop-down menu sporting the names of a number of popular ISPs. If your ISP is on the list, select it and follow the instructions provided. If your ISP is not listed, select Other and follow Google's instructions. You can also verify the ownership of your domain by linking your Google Apps account to an existing Google Analytics account, adding a meta tag to your site's homepage, or uploading an HTML file to your server. You'll find those options under the Alternate Methods tab. After following through on any of these methods, click the Verify button. Within 48 hours your new personalized Gmail address will be ready for action. Six Great Alternatives to Gmail Maybe you're a unique and special snowflake that can't bear to use the same email service as everyone else. Or perhaps you just feel like rebelling against something—anything. No matter the reason, you yearn to leave Gmail behind in search of a new webmail service. We're OK with that, and we're not going to try to talk you out of it. In fact, here's a list of six alternatives to get you started. Just remember to write us once in a while so that we know you're all right, OK? GMX If you're looking to break free of Gmail, GMX is a great place to start. Offering users 5GB of email storage accessible via POP or IMAP and the ability to send attached files up to 50MB in size, GMX can hold its own in a blow-for-blow fight with Google's email service. www.gmx.com Hushmail The folks at Hushmail pride themselves on providing a high-security webmail service to their personal and business clients. With the Hush Encryption Engine protecting your webmail's privacy, you can be certain that your digital information is in good hands. www.hushmail.com Inbox.com Much like Google, Inbox.com is a veritable department store of online awesomeness. Aside from offering users 5GB of free email storage, the service also provides file storage, photo sharing capabilities, a virtual message board, and computer-side email notification and download clients. It's hard to argue with that kind of value. www.inbox.com Windows Live Hotmail More than 360 million users can't be wrong. Thanks to a number of recently introduced new features, one of the most popular webmail services in the world is now also one of the most versatile. Offering calendar, instant messaging, and online storage solutions, Microsoft has done Hotmail some serious justice in recent years. www.hotmail.com Lavabit Sick of spam? So's Lavabit, and it's got an email account with your name on it. By providing clients with an impressive mixed bag of antispam technologies, Lavbit makes for a sane email experience that's mostly Viagra- and Nigerian prince–free. www.lavabit.com Zoho If you rely on your webmail for your business, you're going to love Zoho. Offering a feature set similar to that enjoyed by Google Apps users, Zoho will brand your webmail with your company's domain name, letting you send out emails in style. www.zoho.com
How to Have an Empty, Clutter-Free Inbox Welcome to Inbox Zero, an email management philosophy that could change your digital life A 2010 report by the Radicati Group estimated that roughly 90 trillion emails are sent per year. If you're like us, you know that it can feel as though every single one of those messages somehow makes its way into your inbox in a bid to ruin your day or week before it has even started. (For many of us, this phenomenon is called Monday.) 
Just looking at this cleared-out inbox makes us feel less stressed out. Some of us manage the flow in a standard linear fashion. Others have developed complex, byzantine systems of folders, archives, and filters. Neither is right or wrong, but lately we've begun to wonder if we could do things better. Enter Merlin Mann's Inbox Zero philosophy, which purports to help clear the clutter and cut your overwhelming inbox down to a manageable size. We'll explain what Inbox Zero is, how it works, and why you might want to use it. Or not. Origin Story The underpinnings of Inbox Zero were culled from a series of articles that first appeared on Merlin Mann's 43 Folders blog (www.43folders.com), as well as from the task-management Tao of David Allen's Getting Things Done site (www.davidco.com). Why the name? Because if you're doing it right, every time you open your mail client or browse to your webmail, all new email must be categorized and dealt with, deleted or archived, immediately, leaving you with no messages in your inbox. For those of us who are greeted by thousands of old messages each time we check our email, this is a pretty extreme idea. Inbox Zero operates under the premise that everything in life, email included, can be categorized, and that the number of categories should be as few as possible. The Five Categories To get Inbox Zero neophytes started, Mann suggests five categories that email should fall under:
Delete or Archive Email that has been read, resolved, or has no sway on your life should be immediately deleted or archived. Delegate If an email needs to be forwarded to another person in order to complete a task, forward it. That said, be sure to follow up and make sure the task is being attended to. Respond Not all email demands a response. Some can simply be acted upon. Entering a meeting into your calendar is a good example of this. In the event that you do need to send a reply to someone's message, keep it short and to the point. Mann suggests that no email should be longer than five lines in length. While some of your coworkers, friends, or family might think you're being snippy with them, you can deal with this by leaving an explanation for your brevity in an email signature. Defer If you don't have enough information to take action on an email, or your response to a message is dependent on the work of others, come back to it later. The Inbox Zero philosophy demands that after you've read a message it be moved out of your inbox in one way or another, so set up a folder for deferred action. And don't let this get out of control. Do If you can take care of a task sent to you via email, do so immediately and get it out of the way. Once the task is completed—you guessed it—delete it from your inbox. Or archive it. That's the bare minimum the Inbox Zero system requires. Depending on your job or lifestyle, you may need to throw a few additional categories or folders into the mix. Mann advises that should this be the case, it's best to keep things as simple as possible. For example, if you feel the need to archive a message, maintain a single archive folder. Complex subcategory-driven filing systems only serve to stymie the email simplicity that this is supposed to achieve. As you receive new mail, each message should be addressed and dealt with immediately by mercilessly jamming it into one of the five Inbox Zero categories and perhaps a few user-created ones. It's easy to see how this could be an effective weapon in the war against inbox bloat and counterproductivity. By following the rules, users are empowered with the ability to whittle the contents of their inbox down to nil in no time at all. For anyone who receives a mountain of messages on a daily basis, this is a great way to increase your overall productivity, as less time spent on dealing with email means more time that you can spend on higher-priority tasks. Drawbacks The Inbox Zero philosophy may not be everyone's cup of tea. For starters, if you don't receive large amounts of email on a regular basis, there's little productivity to be gained in clearing out your inbox on a regular basis, as your volume of mail is already manageable. If this is the case, we will gladly trade places with you. 
The cluttered, nested-folder hierarchy directly contradicts the principles of Inbox Zero. Some detractors argue that taking pause to wipe out the contents of your inbox on a regular basis is a waste of time, with far too many productive minutes lost to the sorting of emails for the sake of categorization. Others, especially those who manage multiple projects or have a number of clients they work for, find that deleting or archiving their messages can cause more harm than good when it comes time to track assignments or create an invoice at the end of the month. Laziness and time are also factors to consider here. No matter how many folders or rules you create to manage your chronically bulging inbox, if you don't have enough drive or hours in the day to enact your organizational scheme, your efforts (or lack thereof) will turn into one big bag of organizational failure. In the end, the best inbox management system—Inbox Zero or otherwise—is the one that works for you. The 8 Worst Email Blunders of All Time 8) Birthday Bitch London bank employee Lucy Gao was turning 21. A keystone moment in anyone's life, but for Lucy, it was also a reason to demand, in email, that every guest at her birthday celebration treat her like the royalty she wasn't. "I will be accepting cards and small gifts between 9 p.m. and 11 p.m.," was but one of Lucy's many diva-like pronouncements. Soon, several billion people were privy to all of them. 7) Out Damn Spot! Secretary Jenny Amner accidentally spilled ketchup on her boss's pants while they lunched together at a local eatery. The next day, Jenny got an email suggesting she cover cleaning costs. She agreed, again via email, but only after citing the very real fact that her mother had died that same day, then chiding the exec for being such an uncaring tightwad, then telling everybody about it. Jenny's boss resigned soon thereafter. 6) Mmm… Spam Irish Green Party member Eamon Ryan got serious in 2008, successfully pushing important antispamming legislation through that country's parliament. So how did the Greens commemorate such an accomplishment? By inviting, via email, in spamlike fashion, regional technology bloggers to participate in a "viral video" contest. Sure, we've heard of far worse spam, just not worse-timed spam. 5) Cruel Fool April 1, 2011: The University of California, San Diego, alerted all 47,000 people who'd applied to the institution that they'd been granted admission—a massive miscalculation of approximately 30,000 potential students. Needless to say, it took days to undo the damage. 4) Poetic Injustice Britain's Joseph Dobbie met what he felt was the woman of his dreams and soon thereafter adorned her inbox with a highly sensitive and very lengthy expression of his feelings. But Dobbie's would-be princess declined, laughingly forwarding his prose to her sisters, who then reforwarded it to the world. Apparently unfazed, Dobbie has since insisted he's received more overtures than mockery. 3) All Wet When your country is in the grips of a killer flood, you gotta have a little sympathy, right? Wrong, at least in the case of a certain unnamed employee of Australia's Queensland Health. Seems the insensitive boob emailed a mass memo demanding that absentee staff furnish photo proof they were indeed flood victims. 2) Careless Whispers Adultery, spanking, force-feeding, tickle torture. An episode of Criminal Minds? Well, maybe, but in this instance we're talking about staid old Cornell University. Two Cornell employees, John and Lisa, somehow misdirected their pseudo-BDSM perv-ersation to the entire campus. 1) Wang Chung Peter Chung, filthy-rich investment banker by day, nonstop stud machine at night. At least that's what Chung led his compatriots to believe in what surely must be considered one of the most pompous emails ever devised. Begging for an additional army of condoms was just the start; Chung bragged openly about virtually every facet of his life. But his bosses weren't nearly so amused. When they somehow received wayward copies of the grandstanding, Chung was canned. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  Us jaded Maximum PC cynics are used to paying too much for underperforming broadband service. Turns out, several city governments in North Carolina aren't quite as dead inside as we are, and they began offering low-cost Internet access to their citizens to try and fill the ISP's gaping performance gap.
When house bill 129--which would have put a leash on the cities that offered Internet access--landed on Governor Beverly Purdue's desk, she refused to endorse it. But don't celebrate yet. Citing a possible "unfair advantage over the private sector," she also refused to veto the bill. By basically just staring at the paper as it sat on her desk, she guaranteed that it would become signed into NC law, without all the pesky political problems that signing it would have caused. The bill bans cities from using resources on communications services, even if they can supply the funding from another revenue source. DailyTech reports that both the Governor and the representative who sponsored the bill received campaign funding from the communications companies opposed to city-offered Internet access. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  Like we said on Friday, Sony just can't catch a break. Japan's major earthquake devastated the company the same as it did almost every other Japanese company; then hackers kicked them (and their crappy security systems) while they were down and brought the PlayStation network to its knees. It's been bad news after bad news since March, and the company's recently revised financial forecast shows just how hard the past few months have been to Sony's wallet.
Original forecasts pegged the company's projected income for the year at about $850 million; the new events and line items drags that number down to almost a $3.14 billion dollar loss. That's a turnaround of nearly $4 billion, a number that's sure to send investors reeling themselves. And, since the addendum only takes events up to the end of March into account, the costs associated with the PlayStation Network debacle aren't even included in that figure. Digging into the report, Sony pins most of the blame on two events. Sony estimates the direct and indirect costs from the earthquake at approximately $551 million, and the company's also due to chalk up a $4.4 billion dollar non-cash charge to deal with Japanese tax issues. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  Remember Google's shouting match with China last year? It got so bad that Hillary Clinton ended up comparing the "Great Firewall of China" to the Berlin Wall, and Google threatened to pull out of the country. Now, a new lawsuit alleges that Cisco may have helped to build that wall.
The Human Rights Law Foundation brought the lawsuit on behalf of 11 members of the Falun Gong, a spiritual movement oppressed in China. The suit claims that Cisco not only helped to design the Great Firewall, but that the company helped tweak the software to better help stamp out the Falun Gong. An article in the New York Times states that a PowerPoint sales presentation leaked in 2008 exposed Cisco's involvement in China, and that it contained the phrase "douzheng evil Falun Gong cult and other hostile elements." During the Chinese Revolution, the communist party used the term "douzheng" synonymously with "persecute undesirable elements." The lawsuit says Falun Gong members identified by the Firewall were tortured and killed. In a rebuttal to the New York Times article, the company responded: "Cisco does not operate networks in China or elsewhere, nor does Cisco customize our products in any way that would facilitate censorship or repression." I guess we'll see if the court agrees? | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  With so many ways of spending our hard earned dough, it can be difficult to keep tabs on where our cash goes. For small business owners whose work expenses often overlap the cost of day-to day living, things can get even more complicated. If you're serious about getting your financial life straight and keeping it there, Wave Accounting is the right tool for the job. Free, easy to use and insanely powerful, Wave is our Chrome Web App of the Week.
Wave draws power and simplicity of use from the fact that the application is designed to interface with your existing online banking and credit card accounts, making manual entry of expenses and income a thing of the past. Users can choose from a wide variety of banks and credit card vendors, enter their online banking password information and import all of their income and expenses in under five minutes. Once the import is completed, you'll be asked to categorize your expenses using an extensive, but easy to navigate checklist. 
As with other accounting software, the more information you provide to Wave, the deeper and more accurate a picture it can paint for you of your financial situation. Data is presented as a bar graph or pie chart, detailing income and expenditures on a month-by-month basis. Additionally, Wave allows users to keep track of invoices, vendors and customers, so you always know who you owe, who owes you, and what the cash coming into or leaving your wallet is for. After using Wave for a month, you'll wonder how you ever got along without it. Be sure to check back every Monday for another Chrome Web App of the Week. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  There's not need to be embarrassed for owning an old -- really old -- PC that barely gets from point A to point B without coughing up a hairball. There's something to be said for that kind of loyal commitment and frugal tenacity (do we even need to mention gas prices?). But hey, maybe it's time to think about moving on. If it's fated to be, you could win a new rig for doing nothing more than sharing your name and email address with Crucial, and a few details about your one-legged system.
First things first. Maximum PC is in no way affiliated with Crucial's "Oldest Computer & Owner Couple Sweepstakes." This is Crucial's thing, not ours, we just figured if there's a chance you could win a new PC, you'd want to know about it (we're cool like that). Savvy? Great, let's move one. Crucial says it will randomly select one lucky winner to receive a brand new Asus Eee PC T101MT multi-touch tablet PC. All you have do to enter is fork over your full name, email address, the make/model of your old PC, number of years together, best memories together, and your birthdate (must be 18 years or older to enter). Doesn't sound so bad, eh? And hey, it's open to Canadian residents, too. You'll find more details and an entry form here. Best of luck to any of you who enter! Image Credit: techmynd.com | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  How's your resume looking these days? If you have experience with senior management and a passion for software, you may have what it takes to land at job at Hewlett Packard. Citing "people familiar with the matter," Bloomberg says more high level workers are getting ready to jump HP's ship, including senior vice presidents Marius Haas, Tom Iannotti, and Gary Budzinski.
That should create at least three new job openings, plus HP is also looking for a new senior executive to lead its software business. And if you're weary about joining a company having trouble holding onto high level help, don't worry, HP's ship isn't sinking, it's just changing course. "There's been a shift in how they think strategically about the business," said Abhey Lamba, an analyst at International Strategy & Investment Group in New York. "You're going to see people leave and new blood come in." According to Bloomberg and its sources, Haas, who was in charge of HP's computer networking division, is leaving because of an apparently better offer at private equity firm KKR & Co. Iannotti, who led HP's enterprise services, is simply retiring, and Budzinski is simply leaving. Though HP's ship isn't sinking, the OEM has been navigating through rough waters lately. After just six months on the job, HP's CEO, Leo Apotheker, cut $1 billion from his annual sales projection and issued current-quarter forecasts that fell shy of expectations on Wall Street, mostly due to slumping PC sales. Image Credit: briggsauto.com | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  AMD today rolled out its G-Series platform, the world's first combination of low-power CPU and advanced GPU integrated into a single embedded Accelerated Processing Unit (APU). The G-Series is all about power, or more specifically, the power you're not consuming. According to AMD, these APUs carry thermal design power (TDP) ratings of 5.5 and 6.4 watts, resulting in up to 39 percent power savings compared to previous versions.
G-Series APUs ship in a 361mm2 package that AMD says is ideal fo compact, fanless embedded systems like digital signage, kiosks, mobile industrial devices, and emerging industry standard small form factors like Qseven. "We have seen many of our embedded customers deploy fanless systems even with our 15W TDP processors in the past. Today we take the ground-breaking AMD Fusion APU well below 7W TDP and shatter the accepted traditional threshold for across-the-board fanless enablement," said Buddy Broeker, director, Embedded Solutions, AMD. "System designers can now unleash their creativity without being constrained by heat or size issues." AMD claims its G-Series APUs offer up to 3 times the performance per watt of previous generation parts. Other notable features include DirectX 11 support, OpenGL 4.0, OpenCL 1.1, and AMD Turbo on select models (T56N and T40N). Image Credit: AMD | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  The new Clickfree C2 Rugged Back-up Drive is "built to strict U.S. military standards," though that doesn't mean you should lug this on the battlefied and use it to repel bullets. What you can do is accidentally (or purposely, if you're the curious type) drop the drive from up to four feet, plug it into your PC, and watch it come to life as if nothing happened.
Wearing a sturdy rubber outer sleeve, inner shock absorbers, and the company's patented EASY Run feature, Storage Appliance Corporation bills this thing as the "world's only rugged portable backup drive with automatic setup and installation." All you have to do is plug it into your PC via USB and the drive will automatically start, search, organize, and backup your data; no setup or configuration is needed. Unfortunately the C2 doesn't support USB 3.0, limiting users to USB 2.0 transfer speeds -- bummer. On the bright side, pricing isn't ridiculous for a backup drive. The C2 is shipping now in 500GB form for $100. Image Credit: Storage Appliance Corporation | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  Utah-based Xi3 Corporation has announced a Chrome OS-running version of its flagship Modular Computer. The company made the announcement in a recent press release. Touting its upcoming ChromiumPC modular desktop as "the world's first desktop computer running Google's Chrome operating system," the company revealed in the press release that it has been working on the machine since 2009.
The vendor has chosen the 4th of July as the launch date for its ChromiumPC. At this stage, not a lot is known about the cloud OS-based modular computer apart from its launch date and the vague bit about it being "powered by a dual- or single-core 64-bit, x86-based processor, housed in a chassis measuring 4.0- x 3.656- x 3.656-inches and available in multiple colors, including a chrome-plated chassis." With it effectively being a Xi3 Modular Computer, the ChromiumPC will feature three easy-to-upgrade modules instead of the single mobo found in standard computers: "Taken in concert these three modules form the basis of what has been the classic motherboard, with the Processor Module housing the microprocessor and RAM, the Primary I/O Module typically housing the majority of the external communications ports, and the Secondary I/O Module typically housing Ethernet, video and power connections." | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  After five weeks of testing on the Firefox Aurora channel, Firefox 5 has graduated to the beta channel. Maybe more important is the fact that this release shipped on time, which bodes well for Mozilla's planned June 21 launch date for the final version. And while there aren't a ton of changes in Firefox 5, Mozilla's mechanics rooted out 1,053 bugs under the hood for what's hopefully a smoother ride.
Other than bug fixes, Firefox beta 5 introduces the following changes: - Added support for CSS animations
- Added support for switching Firefox development channels
- The Do-Not-Track header preference has been moved to increase discoverability
- Improved canvas, JavaScript, memory, and networking performance
- Improved standards support for HTML5, XHR, MathML, SMIL, and canvas
- Improved spell checking for some locales
- Improved desktop environment integration for Linux users
For a longer -- much longer -- and more detailed list of what's new in Firefox 5, oil up your mouse's scroll wheel and run through the complete list of changes here. Firefox Beta Download | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  Maybe the corner store was out of trumpets. For all we know, Hewlett-Packard's PR guy is off on vacation. Lucky for us, the Internet affords no secrets, so even if HP doesn't feel like making a big deal out of its new g6s notebook series, this 15.6-inch Sandy Bridge laptop will still get the same attention we give to all new gear.
A base configuration starts at $575, so long as you want the lid swathed in "sonoma red," "sweet purple," "luminous rose," or "pacific blue." If you're okay with "charcoal grey," HP will knock $25 off the starting price. Let's talk specs. For $575/$550, the g6s comes delivered with an Intel Core i3 2310M processor, 4GB DDR3 memory (free upgrade from 3GB), Intel HD 3000 graphics, 500GB 5400RPM hard drive (free upgrade from 320GB), 8X DVD burner, 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi, webcam, Altec Lansing speakers, three USB 3.0 ports, HDMI, multi-card reader, Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit, and a 6-cell battery. There are, of course, several upgrade options, like more RAM, faster processors, bigger and faster spinning hard drives, Blu-ray drive, and other odds and ends. You can check it out here. Image Credit: HP | | | | | | | | | |  | |  | |  |
